==Phrack Magazine==
Volume Five, Issue Forty-Six, File 5 of 28
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-:[ Phrack Pro-Phile ]:-
This issue our prophile introduces you to one of the craziest people
I've ever met from the Underground. And coming from a complete loon
like me, that's saying something. This guy is a real Renaissance Man:
Hacker, programmer, burglar, convict, star of stage and screen...
Of course, that someone could only be:
Minor Threat
~~~~~~~~~~~~
_____________________________________________________________________________
Personal Info:
Handle: Minor Threat
Call him: MT, minor, lamer
Born: 1972 in Walnut Creek, California
Age: 22
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 155 lbs
e-mail: mthreat@paranoia.com
www: http://www.paranoia.com/~mthreat/
Affiliations: Dark Side Research
Computers owned: 1981: IBM PC
1982: none
1984: PCjr
1988: XT Clone
1990: 386/25 Clone
1992: Too many to legally list
1994: Pentium & 486
How I got started
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 1981, my dad worked for IBM. In October of that year, he
brought home a PC, and I jumped on BASIC. It wasn't until 1984 that
I got my first modem. I had just moved to Florida with my dad, and
he had a modem. I met some other kids with computers and modems and
they taught me what modems were for: "You call other people's
computers and try to get their passwords and intercept their mail".
(That's what I was taught!) It wasn't until a few months later I
realized that this wasn't the actual purpose of BBSs and modems.
My first BBS was the Towne Crier BBS at FAU (Florida Atlantic
University), 305-393-3891 (I still remember that damn number), but
the NPA has since changed to 407. We thought it was so cool when
we logged on as "All" and deleted all the messages posted to "All".
In about 1985, I moved back to Austin. I screwed around for
several years without doing any real hacking. When I got to high
school, I wanted to change my grades like in War Games, so I looked
through the counselor's office until I found a number to the
Education Service Center. I had to scan a whole _100_ numbers
(929-13xx) to find the HP3000 dialup. Once I found it, I had no
idea what to do. I gave the number to a friend in high school,
who gave it to some of his hacker friends. They hacked it and gave
it back to me, complete with a full list of passwords and commands.
It turns out, the two Austin hackers who did it were The Mentor and
Erik Bloodaxe, but I didn't know that for another 3 years.
Shortly after this, I picked my permanent handle. Minor Threat
was an early-to-mid 1980's punk band from Washington, DC. They're no
longer together, but Fugazi is pretty good and Ian McKaye (from
Minor Threat) is in Fugazi. I actually got the handle off of one
of my sister's tapes, before I even heard them. But now I like the
music too.
Eventually, I found a local pirate board, met all the local
pirates, and got into the warez scene for a while. I joined PE
(Public Enemy), the pirate group. (I cracked the warez!) Warez were
only so fun, so I looked for other stuff. I met some VMB lamers and
got into that scene for about a month, and got bored again.
This was 1990, our 950s were running out, and we needed another
way to call out. So I took an old VMB hacking program I had
written, and changed it around to scan for tones, in random order
to avoid Ma Bell problems. I nicknamed it ToneLoc, short for Tone-
Locator. I gave it to some friends (Alexis Machine & Marko Ramius)
and eventually, it ended up on some warez boards. It got pretty
popular, so I made a version that worked for more people, called
it 0.90, and released it. Then I lost the source in a hard drive
crash, and stopped working on it.
I was 18 and mom said it was time to get out of her house, so
I got my own apartment. Marko Ramius and I learned about trashing
central offices, and gained COSMOS access. We barely knew what
COSMOS was .. I knew I had read about it in old Phrack articles, and
I remembered that it was "elite." Our problem was, we still knew no
other "real" hackers, and we had to learn COSMOS. After trashing
and trashing, we still had no COSMOS manuals. We had to get them
somehow. I can't say how, I'll leave it to your imagination.
Marko and I started breaking in buildings and got pretty
good at it. We had about a 60% success rate I would guess. But we
never stole anything -- we just looked for cool information. In
1991, we got caught in a building, and got charged with Criminal
Trespassing. We both got probation for a Class A misdemeanor.
We decided it was time to stop breaking in buildings.
Late in 1991, I got e-mail on a bulletin board from someone
named Mucho Maas. He said he had gotten ToneLoc and wanted a
few new features. I told him I had lost the current source and
all I had was an old (0.85) source. He said he would take the
old source, add the new features, and bring it up-to-date with
the current source. So he did, and we released ToneLoc 0.95.
If it weren't for Mucho, ToneLoc would still be at version 0.90,
and anyone who ran 0.90 knows how hard it was to get it running
right.
About the same time, I was getting on a few BBSs in the
Washington DC area. (Pentavia was the best while it was up).
I met several people there... including a guy named Codec. Codec
was mostly a phone phreak, but did a little hacking as well. But
when it came to PBX's, he was a master. Not only had he exploited
PBXs for free long distance use like the rest of us, but he had
actually REMOVED entire PBX systems from buildings! (See his
article on how to do this, Phrack 43, article 15). But he had
also gotten caught and was on federal probation.
A few months after I met Codec, he had an 'incident'
and was on the run again. I agreed to let him live with me, so
he flew down and moved in. We got a 2 bedroom place, and set
the place up d0pe. There were over 9 phone extensions, (not
including cordless), and about the same number of computers (Most
of which were Codec's). We had the funnest 3 months ever ...
but about 2 weeks after SummerCon 1992, we got arrested.
Favorite things
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Women: w0w
Music: Sonic Youth, Cure, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Orb, B-Boys,
Jane's Addiction.
Favorite Book: 1984
My Car: 1990 300ZX Twin Turbo, Wolf Chip mod to 360
horsepower. It's fucking fast.
Favorite Movies: Jackie Chan movies, The Killer, Reservoir Dogs,
The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Hardware.
Favorite TV: MacGyver
What are some of your most memorable experiences?
Being polygraphed by the Secret Service in 1991 for something having
to do with some lamer threatening the president on an Alliance
Teleconference. I failed the polygraph the first time, then I
passed it the second time. (How's that for the government?)
Eventually, some other 15-year old got probation for doing it.
Being arrested with Codec in 1992. He ran, outran the cops, jumped
a fence about 8 feet tall, and eventually got in a struggle with
a cop over the his gun (Officer Sheldon Salsbury, Austin PD). The
gun went off, and we were both booked on attempted capital murder.
It turned out that the bullet hit no one, and all the blood was from
the cop hitting himself in the head with his own gun, although the
cop claims that Codec hit him in the forehead with a 2-meter ham
radio from like 20 feet away. Right. A search warrant was executed
on our apartment, and approximately $800,000 worth of AT&T Switching
equipment was seized from Codec's closet. It turns out, we were
narced on and set-up by :
Jon R. Massengale
6501 Deer Hollow
Austin, TX 78750
DOB: 9-7-62
SSN: 463-92-0306
Being the first in Texas to have Caller-ID, before it was legally
available.
Losing control of my car at 140mph, doing a slow 360 at about 120,
living through it, and not doing too much damage to my car.
Good times:
Going up to Seattle to visit Cerebrum in May 1993, seeing Fugazi,
getting our car towed, then reading the dialups to the towing
company's xenix (login: sysadm). Finally getting our Oki 900's
to clone/tumble/do other d0pe things. Calling each other on
our Okis from 5 feet away, putting them together and causing
feedback.
Setting up my apartment with Codec with a 10-station Merlin system,
and a 9-station network.
SummerCon 1993. "Culmination of Coolness." Sorry, can't say any
more.
Some People To Mention:
There are a lot of people who I would like to mention that have helped
me greatly and who I have known for a very long time:
Marko Ramius - First pirate/hacker I really knew in person. We
did a lot of crazy shit together.
Alexis Machine - Second hacker-type I met, and a true Warez Kid.
(that's a complement!)
Mucho Maas - Brought back ToneLoc from the dead. Always told
me what I shouldn't do, and always said "I told
you so" when I got busted.
Codec - I had some of the funnest times of my life with
Codec... unfortunately, it was so much fun it was
illegal, and we got busted.
Cerebrum - Very cool friend who got narced on by a fuckhead
named Zach, 206-364-0660. Cerebrum is serving
a 10 month federal sentence in a nice prison camp
in Sheridan, Oregon. He gets out about December
10, 1994.
The Conflict - Unfortunately, I can't tell you. Maybe in about 8
more years.
ESAC Administrator - "Have you been drinking on the job?"
What I'm up to now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I heard that the next Phrack Pro-phile was going to be about
me, I realized, "I must be retired". It's probably true.. at least I hope
it is. The 5 months I spent in jail was enough. I just started going
back to University of Texas, where they will only give me a VAX account
(lame). For the first time in 4 years, I think my life is going in
the 'right' direction.
Advice
~~~~~~
I can only hope anyone who reads this will take this seriously.
Here's my advice: If you ever get arrested or even simply questioned about
ANYTHING AT ALL, DO NOT COOPERATE. Always tell the law enforcement
official or whoever, "I'm sorry, I can't talk without my lawyer present"
Cooperating will never help you. Codec recently pointed out to me, that
we should be the "role models" of what people should do when they get
busted. Both of us remained loyal and quiet during our whole case. I was
in jail for 5 months, and Codec is still in prison, but we never talked.
Being narced on by a 'buddy' is the worst thing that could ever happen
to you, and narcing on a 'buddy' is the worst thing you could do to
them. If you get busted for something, don't pass the punishment on
to someone else. I hope most of you never have to face this, but if
you do, you will live much better knowing that you didn't give in to
a bunch of 'law enforcement' pricks.